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PEE C H 




RICHARD BUSTEED, 



DELIVERED AT 



FANEUIL HALL, BOSTON, 



OOTOBEE 31st, 1862. 



ON THE ISSUES OF THE WAR, AND THE DUTY OF 
SUSTAINING THE GOVERNMENT. 



U . S . W E S T C T T & CO., PRINTERS. 
No. 79 John Street. 

1862. 



•37 6 






Mr. President and Gentlemen : " 

I meet and greet you to-day as a law-abiding, government- 
sustaining, liberty-loving, and treason-hating man, I do 
not appear among you as a politician of any of the schools ; 
I am not either a pervert or convert. The mere political 
opinions of any man are now of very little consequence. 
The nation is in the midst of a terrible struggle for its life, 
and how best and qaickliest to save it, are the great ques- 
tions of the hour. Everything else must be subordinated to 
this, because everything else is less than this. War — re- 
lentless, bloody, and unprovoked — has been made, and is 
being made, upon a people, loving peace and wishing to 
pursue it, A war which, originating in fraud, pecula- 
tion, and treason, must be allowed no other end than the 
absolute unqualified subjugation of the traitors who com- 
menced and are carrying it on. Twenty milHons of freemen 
are audaciously challenged by an insolent foe to yield up 
without a struggle, their liberty, their property, and their 
government. This is the issue. To this I will address my- 
self. Its gravity demands that it be considered plainly, de- 
liberately, and truthfully. The issue is one of individual as 
much as national concern. It addresses itself directly to the 
well-being of each, as much as to the well-being of all ; nor 
can its consideration be avoided or postponed. We are in a 
hand-to-hand conflict with a haughty, wicked, and un- 



scrupulous enemy — an enemy that dislikes us, and our habits, 
tastes, and principles — an enemy that vauntingly proclaims 
his superiority in all that makes up a strong, wise, and 
respectable manhood — that plumes himself upon his chivalry, 
aristocracy, and cotton, and consigns us to the inferior con- 
dition of " Yankee mudsills" and "greasy mechanics." 

It is well to understand what the conflict is which is being 
waged by these self-adulatory, neighbor-slandering, liberty- 
stealing warriors. It is a war between darkness and light, 
between slave-pens and school-houses, between labor and 
capital, between democracy and aristocracy, between the 
rights of the many and the illegally-gotten privileges of the 
few, between violence and law, between slavery and liberty, 
between falsehood and truth. Now, God defend the right ! 
This war is not prosecuted to determine who shall administer 
the government, but to decide if there shall be any govern- 
ment left to administer ; not shall the empire be divided in 
twain, but shall the nation exist ; not to settle the question 
what laws shall prevail in the tenitories, but whether 
there shall be any national domain, state or territorial. It 
is not a war to ascertain who shall exercise the elective fran- 
chise, but whether there shall be any elections held. Its 
objects are to establish the invalidity of a constitutional 
selection of the chief ruler of the American nation, to over- 
throw a result procured by a strict adherence to aU the forms 
of governmental law, and to establish a revolution upon the 
bases of perjury, treason, "sdolence, and fraud. The people of 
these States are not now called on to choose between the 
different modes of collecting revenue, or laying imposts, to 
decide whether a protective or jirohibitive tariff will best 
conserve mercantile and mechanical interests, or a national 



bank be a benefit or a bane. The question tbat confronts 
them is existence or death ; is the Union, with all its atten- 
dant blessings and powers, its history and experience, its 
glory and pride, its achievements and hopes, or disunion and 
the long list of recurring calamities that attend in its train. 
The question is not so much whether slavery shall continue 
in South Carolina and Georgia, as whether freedom shaU be 
the rule in Massachusetts, and the navigation of the llissis- 
sippi be free to "Wisconsin and Illinois, 

These are the general characteristics of the slaveholders' 
rebellion. Its detailed features are part of current history, 
and need not now be entered into or dwelt upon. If I am 
right in my diagnosis of it ; if this impious attempt to 
destroy the liberties of a people be the result of lawless 
ambition, of frenzied hate, of wicked and designing aims, of 
the lust of power, of the pride of life, then it cannot, will 
not, succeed. It will not succeed, because it ought not. Its 
want of holy purpose, high thought, pure motive, is the 
leaven of its weakness, and neither of its own power nor of 
any aid derived from peaceable or armed intervention of 
England, France, or others, will it achieve final success. 

" The logic of truth gives us mystical lore, 
And coming events cast their shadows before." 

Men change, but principles are eternal. With man's 
moral nature, came broad Hues of demarcation between the 
right and the wrong. Truth and falsehood were so well de- 
fined, and the characteristics of each so plainly traced, as to 
be beyond the power of casuistry to confound or obliterate. 
What was false when the Athenians gathered in the Acropo- 
lis, is false in FaneuO. Hall to-day. Time wears no changes 



upon the azure front of Truth. The cupidity, wickedness or 
carelessness of man may surround it with the dust of false 
ohservances, may bury it from sight beneath the heavy mould 
of disuse, or invest it with strange 'garments, but, like the 
undisclosed fires that burn deep in earth, ever and anon it 
bursts forth to the sight, for the guidance of all who honestly 
seek to worship by its light. 3Iagna est Veritas! ''Iten- 
dureth, and is always strong; it liveth, and conquereth for 
evermore. She is the strength, kingdom, power, and majesty 
of all ages," cried Esdras, five centuries before the Christian 
era. " The eternal years of God are hers \" exclaims the 
poet of our own land. 

The happiness and prosperity of the race depend upon the 
fulfilment of the demands of truth. Its requirements cannot 
be avoided alway or long, without incurring individual, social, 
and national ruin. No private enterprise, and no system of 
government, can be permanently secured, that rests upon an 
inexact moral foundation. To secure success to the one and 
perpetuity to the other, the distinction between justice and 
its contrary must be rigidly and to the end observed. In 
forming the social condition and in enacting laws for it, the 
problems of Euclid may be disregarded; but those of hu- 
manity must be solved by the rules of eternal justice, or woe 
to the state and the political mathematicians. The rights 
of man are imprescriptible. 

No one assumes to doubt or dispute these propositions. 
Church and state, ruler and subject, all assert their agree- 
ment and belief in them, and yet the world practically rejects 
thorn, and allows force and power to take the place of justice 
and right. 

The history of our own country furnishes illustration of 



how much men may protest for justice, and how little they 
may do to secure its empire. The Declaration of American 
Independence sets out with an affirmation that all men are 
created equal, and endowed by their Creator with certain 
inalienable rights, and that among these are life, liberty, and 
the pursuit of happiness. In Mr. Jefferson's draft of the 
Declaration, the words "inherent and" preceded the words 
"inalienable rights," but the instrument, as finally adopted, 
left them out ; pronouncing the endowed rights to be "cer- 
tain," of divine origin, and incapable of alienation. I am 
content with this, because, if liberty be the gift of God, it is 
an inherent right in man, and its inalienability is a necessary 
corollary. 

In the short space of twelve years after this grand charter 
had been given to the world, and while yet ascriptions of 
praise and thanks for it were rising from the hearts and lips 
of oppressed humanity, while yet men folded the writing be- 
tween the leaves of their Bibles, and recounted its truths as 
a monk his beads, the same people upon whose behalf the 
declaration was made, and five of the same persons who, to 
its support, pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor, 
adopted and subscribed the Constitution of 1787, the fourth 
section of which doomed to hapless, hopeless, and perpetual 
enslavement seven hundred thousand human beings, and 
their wi-etched increase to all time. The city had scarce 
been built, under the guidance and instruction of the oracle, 
upon the very spot where oppressed freedom sank bleeding 
and tired down to earth, when the stone of Cadmus was 
thrown among its inhabitants. From that hour forward 
the crop of dragons' teeth multiplied itself, spreading into 



all the soil, and yielding, as its last but legitimate fruit, 
the war and bloodshed which now desolate our once peace- 
ful and prosperous land. It could not be otherwise. Ef- 
fects follow their causes as certainly as night the day, or 
the seasons their course. The law of compensation adjusts 
itself to every condition of man, and each violation of truth 
is followed by a corresponding retribution. 

I know the people are impatient of criticism, when the 
acts of our revolutionary fathers are under consideration. 
This state of the public mind is most creditable. Veneration 
is a natural instinct, and the least return Americans can 
make to an ancestry actuated by pure motives, is to accord 
to their conduct an unqualified honesty of purpose. Venera- 
tion, however, sometimes assumes the form of superstitious 
accej)tance of acts, and blights progress by foreclosing inves- 
tigation. Eespect for the past is very well in its place and 
degree, but we have to do with the age of which we are part, 
and with the future which is to receive our impress; and 
while I yield to no man in afiection and respect for the 
founders of this government, I cannot resign to these feelings 
the exercise of my reason, the convictions of my intelligence, 
or the teachings of my conscience. "Duty is bolder than 
theory, more confident than the understanding, older and 
more imperative than speculative science, existing from eter- 
nity, and recognized in its binding force from the first 
morning of creation." 

I am entirely persuaded that in forming the Constitution, 
if the friends and advocates of free institutions had reso- 
lutely met and firmly denied the claims of the pro-slavery- 
ites, South Carolina would not only have joined the Union, 
but would not have enacted the nullification ordinance of 
1832, or stolen Fort Sumter in 18G1. The fatal recog- 



nition of man's riglits to liold his fellow-man in servile bond- 
age, to make merchandise of human blood and bone, to 
violate every principle of justice, to make the Declaration of 
Independence a tinkling cymbal, and the nation a scorn, is 
the source of the attack made upon the Constitution itself by 
the slave oligarchists of our time, and their conduct illustrates 
the theory that the laws of compensation and retribution are 
unceasingly operative. I do not attack the intentions of the 
men who compromised with the wrong, but I do impeach the 
act itself. " I care not," says Junius, " with what princi- 
ples the patriot is animated, if the measures he supports are 
beneficial to the community. The nation is interested in 
his conduct. His motives are his own." 

The civil strife in which our country is involved, and which 
has culminated in horrid and fratricidal war, establishes the 
fact that neither individual nor national prosperity can per- 
manently exist, if principle be deposed by selfishness and 
conscience be trampled on and defied by injustice. 

It is for these reasons, and reasons akin to these, that I 
lately declared, and now repeat, I am in favor of a'new Con- 
stitution as soon as we can constitutionally procure it ; not 
a moment sooner ; not an instant later. I want a Constitu- 
tion which shall be a palladium of liberty, not a network 
with which to entangle freedom ; which shall maintain the 
rights of every human being to life, liberty, and the pursuit of 
happiness ; to which an American the world over, may refer 
with pride; which wiUmake tyranny tremble in its sinew and 
marrow; and in which involuntary servitude will not be recog- 
nized or contemplated, except as a punishment for crime. 
Any other constitution is not worthy the genius or sufficient 
to answer the instincts of a free, enlightened, and Christian 
people. 



I am sure that if the men who contrived the fundamental 
law under which our government has exercised its attributes 
for seventy-five years, could have anticipated what was to grow 
out of the concession they made to an unjust and cruel sys- 
tem, the Constitution in its present shape, would never have 
been ratified or approved. The fathers regarded the gradual 
abolition of slavery as a necessary element in the future of 
the Eepublic ; and in this faith, and in the belief that they 
thereby secured the blessings of liberty to themselves and 
posterity, ordained an instrument which otherwise they would 
have spurned and rejected. 

I pass from these views of a remote period and transac- 
tion in our history, to a consideration of the present circum- 
stances of the nation. '' The purple testament of bleeding 
war " has been opened upon us. In the midst of an unex- 
ampled career of prosperity, all the industrial and peaceful 
arts have been rudely checked by the red hand of blood. 
The busy click of machinery, the hum of the manufactory, 
the rumbling of the produce-laden wheel, the figures of the 
counting-house, the business of the merchant and the pro- 
fessional, have all vanished before the heavy tread of armed 
men. * Civilians have become soldiers, farmyards are con- 
verted into battle-fields, and churches turned into hospitals. 
Stalwart men are maimed and mangled ; ghastly wounds 
make of life one great suffering; and widowhood and orphan- 
age fill the land with a ceaseless lamentation. 

In such a condition of the public affairs, men must attach 
themselves to one side or the other. There is here no room 
for neutrality, and only an idiot can be indiff'erent. The 
ajipeal is to each of us as individuals ; to you, and me, and 
every man. How will you answer it ? For myself, my 



resolution was long since taken, and remains only nnclianged 
as it is stronger. I believe it to be my plain duty to support 
the Government, and those who administer it, by every 
means in my power, and at any cost of treasure or blood. 
What I do, I would influence others to do ; what I believe 
to be true, I would have others accept for truth. In this 
crisis I would not embarrass the administration, by drawing 
nice or labored distinctions between opposing theories, or by 
the public or private discussion of q[uestions which relate to 
a time of tranquillity and peace. I would forget that I had 
ever made a partisan speech or voted a party ticket. I 
would know nothing among men but my country, and her 
salvation. I would defer politics to "a, more convenient 
season," and devote my time, my means, and my life, if needs 
be, to preserve for posterity the rich inheritance of a free 
government, and its liberal institutions. 

I have satisfied myself as to what is my duty in the 
premises. I believe slavery to be the cause of this war, and, 
therefore, I would abolish slavery forever. I believe slavery 
to have been the source of the heart-burnings and violence 
which disgraced the national legislature, while slavery was 
protected and existed at the national capital, and therefore 
I hail the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia as 
a just, wise, and patriotic act of legislation, demanded as 
well by a proper respect for the opinions of mankind, as by 
humanity, decency, and religion. I believe the President's 
proclamation of emancipation to be an efiectual and speedy 
method of conquering and defeating rebels in arms, and of 
destroying the main-spring of this war, and therefore I 
accept the proclamation without an " if," " and," or " but," 
without dotting an " i," or crossing a " t ;" and rejoice that 



10 

Abraham Lincoln has had the moral courage to look the 
giant evil in the face, and trusting in the right, deal the 
blow that saves the nation. On the first day of January- 
next, the American republic will celebrate a golden wedding 
with Liberty. Truth is on the war-patli to avenge herself, 
and her trusty blade will not rest in sheath until every 
system of falsehood and oppression bites the dust, and every 
hostility Is subjugated to her domination ! 

Will any man, of average intelligence and sanity, deny 
that the existing state of things has its origin in the institu- 
tion of African slavery among us ? If there had been no 
slavery, there would have been no agitation of the question, 
or discussion over its morality or lawfulness. If there had 
been no heated discussion and reprobation of it, the slave- 
holders in Congress would not, they say, have abandoned their 
seats as representatives, or the slaveholders out of Congress 
passed secession ordinances. In a word, if there were no sla- 
very, there would be no rebellion. There is slavery, and there 
is rebellion. Abolish slavery, and you destroy rebellion. The 
syllogism is complete. Alexander H. Stephens, of Georgia, 
himself, asserts this: " Slavery," says he, "has been the 
^'immediate cause of the late rupture, and the present 
'■'revolution. Jefferson saw that the old Union would, some 
"day, break upon this rock. He was right. The prevailing 
"idea admitted by him, and the majority of the statesmen 
"of his tune, was, that the slavery of the | African race was 
"a violation of the rights of nature. But these ideas were 
"fundamentally false. Our new government is based on 
"quite opposite ideas. The negro, in [virtue "of his nature, 
"and by reason of the curse of Canaan, is made for the })osi- 
"tion which lie occupies in our system. The sfo7ie ichich 



11 

" the builders rejected, is become the chief stone of the corner 
" of our new structure." 

Aye, men of Massachusetts, the cause of the "war is the ex- 
istence of slavery ; is the " irrepressible conflict" — urged by 
nature, sanctified by justice, and ever-existing — ^between men 
who own themselves, and men who claim title to their fellows, 
" by reason of the curse of Canaan"; between despotism and 
its ill-starred prey; between justice and oppression. It is 
this that has plunged the nation into an internecine war ; 
it is this that makes the land sodden with blood, and the 
air heavy with the dew of death. 

The utterance of these opinions, and my course consequent 
upon entertaining them, may or not raise against me the cry 
of abohtionist, black republican, negro-worshipper, and the 
like. I am wholly indifferent to this. The sentiments I now 
express may be abolitionism, for all I know or care. They 
are mine, at least, and the result of my earnest, honest, in- 
tensest convictions. I hold them to be democratic, too, in 
the best sense of that word. I deny that democracy in 
America, or elsewhere, means slavery, in any form or degree, 
or under any circumstances. He is not a genuine democrat 
who prefers slavery before liberty, or who, when the fair op- 
portunity presents itself, hesitates to strike for freedom. 
Oppression is the same the world over; it differs only in its 
victims. In England it fastens upon an Irishman; in the 
United States, upon an African. The man who to-day would 
rob a negro of the result of his labor or skill, would, mutatis 
mutandis, cheat a Caucasian to-morrow, and the exiled or 
self-expatriated Irishman who apologizes for and deals ten- 
derly with the enslavement of a race because it has a black 
skin, is not far removed in sympathy, spirit or principle, from 



12 



the aristocratic oppressors of his own people. He has no 
"warrant to speak for a land, every acre of which is cursed 
with the imprint of tyranny's heel. Daniel O'Connell nor 
taught nor believed in such democracy. When he contended 
with lords and commoners for Catholic emancipation, or any 
of the inalienable rights of man, if his opposers turned to 
written constitutions to find authority for venerable imjDosi- 
tion and prescriptive fraud, and hurled at him, "Thus saith 
the laiv ;" this man of the people, this sturdy democrat, this 
genuine son of Erin, silenced their sophistry with, "Thus 
saith the Lord." To all men born in Ireland, claiming to be 
democrats, and striving in this crisis of their adopted coun- 
try's fate, to influence the conduct of their countrymen, I say, 
Go, no wiser thou, and teach likewise. 

There are some men, too, of American birth, who, profes- 
sing attachment for their country and her free establishments, 
and allegiance and loyalty to their government, are yet eter- 
nally complaining, and impeaching all that is done, and all 
that is left undone. No class is so fierce in its protestations of 
patriotism and love of country as they. They would prose- 
cute the war with the utmost vigor, but declaim against the 
authority of the President to send a single soldier into the 
field of battle. They would vote money, if they were in 
Congress, to carry on the war to a sjDcedy and successful 
issue, but assert that the expenditures of government are 
prodigal, unnecessary, and dishonest. They would strike 
rebels down with the most efficient weapons of oflence, but 
always have one half of their armories filled with olive 
branches. They would confiscate the property of rebels, but 
not allow a negro within the protection of our camp lines. 
They would maintain the authority of the Constitution, but 



13 



are prompt with a fresh compromise to traitors, whenever its 
authority is trampled upon and defied by them. They would 
put rebels in arms to death, but will lead Stuart's cavalry 
the way to their neighbor's stables. They would not give an 
inch of territory to Jeff. Davis, until " after Richmond is 
occiipied hy the Union forces." They would fight for "the 
Union as it was," but are ready to " let the erring sisters go 
in peace." This is their love of country, this their patriot- 
ism, this their democracy. In the great State of New 
York, their candidate for Grovernor, in a studied speech, made 
on receiving a nomination by a species of previously-arranged 
political spontaneous combustion, called a nomination by ac- 
clamation, denounces the last session of the national legisla- 
ture, and stigmatizes its course as a career of " agita- 
tion, outrage, and wrong ;" brands congressional virtue as 
" glistening putrescence" and " thin lacquer ;" begs for 
his " proportional share of political power," and enjoins 
upon his followers at this crisis to keej) alive the vigi- 
lance of " party contest ;" draws distinctions between 
" our government and its administration," and suggests that 
" weakness" or " folly in the conduct of affairs, go far to 
justify resistance" to the government itself, and that "mal- 
administration demands change of administration ;" joins the 
scheme of emancipation with his own assertion of " a general 
arming of the slaves," and calls the plan thus begotten by 
himself, but attempted to be foisted uj)on the government, 
" a proposal for the butchery of women and children, for 
scenes of lust and rapine, of arson and murder." All this 
and more, ad nauseam, in the same speech in which, in terms 
of self-glorification, he declares that he, and those who act 
with him, " wish to see our Union saved, and our laws vin- 



14 



dicated." All this, coupled witli tlie admission tliat they 
" do not claim more virtue or intelligence than" their op- 
ponents, who, according to his statement, are "inexperi- 
enced in the conduct of jiublic a£Pairs, drunk with power," 
and "hlack with ingratitude." All this poured into the 
ears of the unreflecting masses, whose educational ac(][uire- 
ments are not sufficient to protect them from the designs of 
sophistical and scheming, or " vulgar and mechanical" poli- 
ticians. All this to secure votes for Horatio Seymour and 
that wretched outcast, his companion and rival, Fernando 
Wood. All this already reprinted in Charleston and Savan- 
nah, with approving comments of the men and their senti- 
ments, and to he greedily caught up by the English press, 
and published as evidence that the great North is divided 
among itself, and has no confidence in its own government. 
All this for their party against their country ! All this for 
themelves against the truth ! "0 shame, where is thy 
blush !" Cicero, in his day, speaking of such, asks, " If 
you are a citizen, in what sense was S]3artacus an ene- 
my ?" 

This is the same class which has made a constant outcry 
and whine, because of what are termed arbitrary arrests by 
the government. How many of these military arrests have 
been made since the rebellion broke out ? Not three hun- 
dred, all told, in a population of twenty millions. Who have 
been arrested ? Has any man of known and approved loyal- 
ty, of good reputation for patriotism among liis neighbors, 
and well-disposed to his government ? Not one. There is 
is a homely adage which says that where there is smoke 
there must be fire. Suspicion does not ordinarily attach it- 
self to innocence. The general judgment of a community is 



15 

not apt to be mistaken, and if a man be reputed to sympa- 
thize with the enemies of his government, and his conduct 
or speech justifies this opinion, it surely is not a harsh exer- 
cise of power at a time when the state is in imminent peril 
from treason, to put such a man out of harm's way until his 
vicious propensity has exhausted itself or been cured. If a 
real patriot be unjustly accused and imprisoned, he will 
readily forgive his country the eiTor of of honest zeal, and the 
home traitors who suffer in this way can sue for false im- 
prisonment, and the country will pay any verdict they re- 
cover. If our government makes no greater encroachment 
upon the rights of the citizen than these military arrests, the 
liberties of the people will not be seriously imperilled by Mr. 
Lincoln's administration. 

This same class of fault-finding " submissionists," are also 
greatly exercised because of the suspension of the writ of 
Habeas Corpus. The President^^has been assailed with every 
species of invective on this account. He has been reminded 
that Charles the First was brought to the block for a lesser act 
of despotism, and that even Napoleon dare not be the tyrant 
he is. The act is denounced as a violation of his oath of 
of&ce and an unwarranted assumption of power. English 
history is ransacked to prove this, and the bones of the old 
barons are exhumed and subpoenaed to attend as witnesses and 
bring "Magna Charta" with them. Analogies are found be- 
tween things wholly unlike and utterly discordant, and the 
submissionists are frightened to death lest the Constitution 
shall be preserved and the country saved in an unconstitu- 
tional way. The respect they have for law is only equalled 
by their love of liberty. Morning, noon, and night, they cry 
and din into the ears of the patriot President, " The Consti- 



16 

tution, the Constitution !" and every pulsation of his heart 
throbbingly answers, " The country, the country !" God 
bless Abraham Lincoln ! 

Let us very briefly consider this question of the suspension 
of the writ of Habeas Corpus. That it may be suspended, 
in cases of rebellion or invasion where the public safety re- 
quires it, is provided by the Constitution itself Which of 
the departments of the Government is charged with the power 
of suspending the writ is the question of embarrassment and 
doubt. Conflicting opinions as to it are entertained by men of 
equal learning and intelligence, and there is no determination 
of the Supreme Court, to which resort can be had. It 
is a question of the construction of a statute, always a diflS- 
cult and vexatious inquiry. It is to know what the framers 
of the Constitution meant, by what they have somewhat in- 
sufficiently expressed. The President, a lawyer himself, and 
a man whose conscientiousness even his opposers concede, is 
of opinion that the Executive may, in the cases prescribed, 
suspend the privilege of the writ. There can be little room 
for doubt that his constitutional advisers agree to this view. 
Mr. Seward and Mr. Stanton enjoy and deserve the highest 
reputation in the legal profession. The Attorney-General 
of the United States, too, has given an official opinion 
in favor of the right of the President to exercise the 
power. Now, who shall decide, when casuists doubt and 
doctors disagree ? If Mr. Lincoln is wrong, he has at least 
erred in good company, and even if it should turn out 
that the better understanding of the constitutional provis- 
ion is not tlie one entertained by the Government, tlie Presi- 
dent may throw into the faces of howling sympathizers with 
treason, that old Latin motto, derived from the twelve Koman 



17 

tables : " Salus populi, suprema est lex." He can say to 
them, "To do a great good, I have done a little wrong. To 
save a nation I im2Jrisoned a man. To preserve liberty 
forever to twenty millions, I restrained five hundred of 
their freedom for a day ;" and, confiding in his own integrity, 
and the generous support of his loyal countrymen, need have 
no anxiety for the present or the future growing out of the 
imprisonment of a few miserable imitators of the vices of 
Benedict Arnold, bereft of the benefit of " capias" or " narr." 
and detained, in defiance of the " habeas corpus ad respon- 
dendum." 

The chief cause of complaint made against the President 
is his emancipation proclamation. It is almost ludicrous tc 
witness the contortions and consternation which this act has 
produced among traitors and their allies, everywhere. In 
one and the same breath, it is proclaimed a harmless thun- 
derbolt, and an unchristian and savage means of overcoming 
an enemy. Now it is ^^vox et prceterea nihil," and now it is 
a sword, and a fire, and a proposal for the horrors of a St. 
Domingo insurrection. To-day, the Richmond and Charles- 
ton papers regard it "a trifle light as air ;" to-morrow, the 
same journals vent columns of hate and fury and abuse upon 
its author, and adjure him, in the language of Othello — 

" Never pray more ; abandon all remorse, 
On horror's head horrors accumulate ; 
Do deeds to make heaven weep, all earth amazed ; 
For nothing canst thou to damnation add 
Greater than that." 

Where is Mr. Lincoln's constitutional authority to issue 
such a proclamation ? ask the advocates of dishonorable 
peace. Where, I ask, in answer, is the constitutional au- 
thority for this slaveholders' war upon the country ? The 

2 



18 



Constitution did not and could not provide for every possi- 
ble condition in the future of the Republic. It did not an- 
ticipate that the thing it gave protection to would make war 
upon the life of its protector. In framing a written code for 
government, much must necessarily be left to rational impli- 
cation, and much more to an absorbing subsequent necessity 
if it arises. It sometimes happens, that to extinguish a con- 
flagration you must fight fire with fire ; the ordinary agencies 
are insufficient for the emergency, and to save the building 
or the town from being a smouldering ruin, you must do 
something else than put on water. It is not often necessary 
or always wise to resort to extreme corrective or restraining 
measures. If, however, the desired end can only be secured by 
the use of such instrumentalities, it is weakness, if not worse 
than weakness, not to employ them. The owner of the orchard 
first tried moral suasion on the thief, who laughed while he 
stole from the richly-laden boughs ; next, tufts of soft grass 
were aimed at and hit, hut did not hurt, the poacher, who 
continued to steal. Finding expostulation and gentle meas- 
ures alike unavailing to protect his proj)erty, the farmer 
tried the virtue of hard blows, and very soon the ensconced 
robber was glad to disgorge his plunder and cry, " Don't, 
don't, I'll come down." 

The President has been as wise as the men who devised 
the new way to put the fire out, and as good-natured as the 
farmer. In his speech at Philadelphia, on his way to Wash- 
ington, he said that in his view of the then aspect of affiiirs, 
" there need be no bloodshed or war. There is no necessity 
for it. I am not in favor of such a course — and, I may say 
in advance, that there will be no bloodshed, unless it be 
forced upon the Government." In his Inaugural Address, he 
declares : 



19 

" The protection wliicli, consistently with the Constitution 
and the laws, can be given, will be cheerfully given to all the 
States, when lawfully demanded, for whatever cause — as 
cheerfully to one section as another. I hold that, in con- 
templation of universal law, and of the Constitution, the 
union of these States is perpetual. I shall take care that the 
laws of the Union be faithfully executed in all the States , 
in doing this, there need be no bloodshed or violence ; and 
the7'e shall he 7ione, unless it be forced on the national 
authority. You [the South] can have no conflict, without 
being yourselves the aggressors." 

This ivas his moral suasion. It failed of its appro- 
priate effect. Congress passed the Confiscation Act, and 
the bill abolishing slavery in tlie District of Columbia, and, 
by the President's approval, these measures became laws. 
TJiese were his tufts of grass, but they were despised by the 
plundering vagabonds, who kept on stealing and cheating. 
Next came the emancipation proclamation. This is his 
coup-de-main, and unless the rebels are within the definition 
of those whom the gods destroy, before the first of January 
they will be singing out right lustily, " Don't throw that 
Btone, Uncle Abe ; we will yield to you : we prefer to live 
under the old Constitution, even with the prospect of its 
being amended, than be exposed to the war-power of a 
great people, exercised in defence of their unity, nationality, 
and laws." 

I want no better evidence of the value of the emancipa- 
tion proclamation than is furnished by the unmistakeable 
panic that seized all rebeldom when it was known it was 
issued. The Congress of the so-called " Confederate States," 
proposed as a retaliatory measure the indiscriminate murder 



20 



of all of our soldiers who, by the chances of the field, should 
thereafter fall into rebel hands. War was to mean ruthless 
and barbaric homicide. The black flag was to be raised, and 
" no quarter" to be the rallying cry of their armies. One 
of the border States men, about whom the submissionists 
exhibit so much concern, the late Hon. T. A, R. Nelson, in 
an address nominally to the people of East Tennessee, but 
really to the doughfaces of these latitudes, cries out against 
" the atrocity of Mr. Lincoln's proclamation," and " his 
many violations of the Constitution, and this crowning act 
of usurpation." " May we not hope," exclaims this South- 
ern ' Pumblechook, ' " that a spirit of resistance will be 
aroused in that section (the North) which, combined ivith the 
efforts of the Soiith, will hurl Mr. Lincoln from ^ower ?" 
May you ? No, sir ; such hope will not be realized ; it is of 
the kind that makes the heart sick. 

The language of this letter is a fair sample of how the 
proclamation affects the traitors, and that may safely be 
assumed discreet and wise for us which embarrasses and 
endangers our enemy. Depend upon it, the emancipation 
arroiu has pierced the heart of treason. 

The rebel states have now their future in their own keep- 
ing. If the effect of the proclamation will be as they claim, 
to incite servile insurrection, they have it in their own hands 
to prevent the horrible catastrophe. More than three months 
have t6 elapse from the date of its issue to the time of its 
going into effect. They are not taken unawares by the 
government. The same proclamation which announces its 
intentions in respect of the slaves of rebels, declares that 
the war is to be prosecuted only for the supremacy of the 
Constitution, the integrity of the Government, and the so- 



21 

lidarity of the Republic. Let the rebels lay down their 
arms; let them return to their allegiance; let them disperse 
and go to their homes; let them cease to be usurpers and 
murderers, and there will be no confiscation of their prop- 
erty, no emancipation of their slaves, no servile insurrection. 
Their peculiar institution, although held accursed by us, 
will continue to receive constitutional and political sanction ; 
their cotton will find an eager market, with quick sales and 
increased profits ; and the whole military force of the United 
States, if need be, stand guard at their hearthstones, to 
protect their women and children from violence and barm. 
But let them keep their blood-stained hands upon the throat 
of the nation ; let them continue pirates on the sea and high- 
waymen on the land ; let them spread carnage and death 
among a people whose magnanimity they have called cow- 
ardice, and whose generosity they have answered with treach- 
ery and deceit ; let them, in a word, continue this war 
upon us till the advent of the coming year, and their blood, 
and the blood of their wives and children, be upon their own 
heads. Impartial history will not inculpate us, if their 
stubborn wickedness ends in a drama of horror which hu- 
manity shudders to contemplate. Oh, misguided men, be 
re-entreated while yet there is space between you and doom. 
Stretch not out any further your hand against God, and 
"run not upon the thick bosses of his bucklers." 

There is a natural way of ending this war, better than 
that proposed by peace-democrats or submissionists ; better 
than to disrupt the nation ; better than the project of two 
rival republics within geographical limits admitting of but 
one ; better for us, better for mankind. The plan is simjile, 
honest, and manly: Let iliem endtlie tvar loho began it. 



22 



From the first boom of treason's cannon until the last act of 
rebel horse-stealing in Pennsylvania, this has been a war of 
aggression upon the North. It is the North that has been 
dragooned and insulted and defied ; it is the North that has 
been refused freedom of speech and the right of petition ; it 
is the North that was denied the right of a joint tenant in 
the common property ; it is Northern men who have been 
tarred and feathered and ridden on rails ; it is Northern 
women who have been stripped and striped ; it is a Northern 
senator who was murderously attacked in the Nation's Coun- 
cil Chamber, by a band of brutal and cowardly ruffians ; it 
is the North that suffered long and was kind ; it is the 
North that was not easily provoked ; that bore all things, 
that endured all things ; it is the North that was struck ; 
it is the North that was wary of entrance to the quarrel ; 
and it is the North, that, "being in, will bear it, that the 
opposed may beware of her." The North luas last in the 
Hcjht ; the Noi'th luill he the last out of it. She did not 
seek it, but she will not shun it. 

This is not only the natural way of ending the slaveholders' 
war, but it is the only way. Let it be at once, and clearly 
understood, that we of the North can never recede, can offer 
no compromise, be a party to no treaty. Our self-respect^ 
our honor, our pride, the safety of ourselves and our posterity, 
free institutions throughout the globe, liberty and the rights 
of man, make it impossible. Primary instincts, educated 
reasonings, and eternal principles, forbid. We may be in- 
volved in a ten years' or a twenty years' war, before our 
Constitution defeats and slays its enemies ; we maybe driven 
or fall into a broil with England, France, or the world ; we 
may be defeated on the Potomac and the Mississippi ; by 



23 

Lee and by Beauregard ; the rebels may be recognised ; 
our currency may depreciate, our commerce cease, our 
lands be uncultivated ; our sons and ourselves fill un- 
known graves ; all tbese ills, and all imaginable distresses 
and calamities may come upon us as consequences of the 
war made against us. We must accept all, ratlicr than 
recede. We fight for Civilization, Christianity, and Freedom, 
against Barbarism, Infidehty, and Slavery ; we fight for 
ourselves and the race, and can not, must not, will not com- 
promise the heritage of freedom, and the interests of man- 
kind. Each succeeding generation will begin the strife 
where we leave it off, and each age consecrate itself to the 
cause of upholding American Liberty. 

In the shock of opposing forces, victory eventually goes 
where it properly belongs, and unless eight millions can 
conquer twenty millions, unless such a minority with no 
excess of mental, moral, or material advantages, can van- 
quish such a majority, possessed of wealth, intellect, educa- 
tion, and physical power, the issue may be mathematically 
ascertained. Add to this, that 

" Thrice is he armed, who hath his quarrel just, 
And he but naked, though locked up in steel. 
"Whose conscience with injustice is corrupted," 

and although the end may not be reached by our children's 
children, the problem is already solved. 

Mr. President, and men of Massachusetts : — When this 
rebellion shall be crushed out, the historian will find in the 
achievements of your glorious state ample material for com- 
mendation and praise. True to your revolutionary charac- 
ter, you have nobly maintained the liberties to secure which 
your ancestors sacrificed their lives, and made every inch of 



LIBKHKY 



24 011 933 386 6 

New England soil an heir-loom of freedom. In your state 
the first blow for man's enfranchisement was struck, and 
the first blood of the Kevolution was spilt ; 

*' Here once the embattled farmers stood, 
And iired the shot heard round the world." 

In this last war for constitutional liberty and democratic 
government, your sons were the first martyrs. The names 
of Whitney and Ladd will be embalmed in the same urn 
with those of Jonas Parker and J onathan Harrington, and 
"The Massachusetts Sixth," divide the honors with the 
" minute-men " of Acton and Bedford. 

I tender to you my most respectful acknowledgments for 
your generous reception ; and here, in this cradle of Ameri- 
can liberty ; within these walls, which have echoed the 
eloquence of Webster, and Choate, and Sumner, and Wil- 
son, and Andrew, and Banks, and Everett ; surrounded by 
the represented lineaments of the great dead, and animated 
by their life and example, I renew my vows to Freedom, 
and solemnly swear to defend and support the United States 
asainst all her enemies. 



L 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



011 933 386 6 



pennuliffe* 
pH8^ 



